


Occam's Razor

by Linesk



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, I'm leaving the tags vague to keep from spoiling the story, M/M, Mind Palace, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, There won't be anything too graphic though, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:28:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25682791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linesk/pseuds/Linesk
Summary: It's a parody of domesticity, Sherlock thinks. The mornings spent bickering over tea, the nights spent watching crap telly and complaining about it. The world continues to spin as they stagnate, falling into a routine that is as blessed as it is maddening. His reflection always seems to flicker when he passes the sitting room mirror, always this blur from his peripheral vision. He has never given much credit to "gut feelings" or "intuition," chiefly concerned with quantifiable facts, but even he is reduced to believing that something is deeply wrong.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 9
Kudos: 28





	1. Your World is Damascus Steel

Sunlight filters through the dusty windowpanes, warm and honeysweet. Molten gold pools across the floorboards as Sherlock peers over the rim of the morning newspaper. John is putting the kettle on, clearly distracted, fumbling about the kitchen as though looking for anything to do with his restless hands. His neck is bowed in that defensive way that Sherlock hates. He won’t make eye-contact, but Sherlock watches him anyway, drinks him up like poison – a sniper’s gaze through a scope.

There’s shuffling and the tinkling laugh of a small girl from the adjoined room. Sherlock wants to go to her, scoop her up and swing her around in a mock-waltz. It’s all pilfered, of course, this domesticity, the farcical “family,” a picture he forced into a too-small frame.

At his core, he is a selfish, wanting thing. A sun-starved strand of ivy curling toward John’s dwindling warmth.

His uneasy reverie is interrupted by an all-too-familiar voice, absolutely dripping with condescension.

“It’s getting late, isn’t it, dear brother?”

Newspaper forgotten, Sherlock snaps his head around, brows drawn in alarm.

“What the _hell_ are you doing here!?” he demands.

Mycroft quirks an eyebrow, his lips curled in perpetual bemusement.

“Oh, don’t be absurd.” He ducks his head, revealing the very unflattering fold of skin beneath his neck that he sometimes forgets to hide with a raised nose. “The game is over. It’s time to come home.”

The sunlight intensifies inexplicably, casting shadows across the space, shadows that flicker and move and _breath_ from the periphery of Sherlock’s vision. John is still stood in the kitchen, but he seems farther off than should be possible. The lines of his back blur, obscuring his silhouette against an ungiving shroud of bright white.

Forcing down the ensuing wave of panic, Sherlock schools his features into something resembling indifference and pivots to face his brother. His dressing gown swishes about his feet with the movement, as though gravity has no meaning in this odd, liminal space.

“I thought we agreed that I would no longer be a guinea pig for your paltry experimental analgesics-“

There’s a muted _clink_ as John sets the first cup of tea down hard against the countertop. He seems to be drifting farther and farther away with each passing moment.

“Enough of this,” Mycroft spits, jumping to his feet. Papers fly everywhere as he stands, abruptly slamming both palms flat against the tabletop. The pages float, suspended, drifting idly between them like jellyfish. “What is it you always say? _‘Only transport?’_ Well why don’t you prove it, hm?”

There’s more tinkling from the kitchen, glass against glass, another cup of tea set on the counter, then another.

Sherlock’s facsimile of control slips as his attention refocuses on John, who is now little more than an oilslick against the burning bright light that floods their flat. He’s still pouring and setting out teacups, a fourth one, a fifth- it’s maddening, this repetitive clinking, the nonsensical ramblings of his brother; his fingernails dig into the worn oak out of desperation, eyes slamshut, as he represses the urge to scream.

Another clink of a cup, but it’s closer this time. Sherlock opens his eyes.

The oppressive brightness is gone. John stands before him with a pointed frown, emphasizing the crows feet, the thin line of his mouth. There’s the everpresent edge of concern and exhaustion writ upon his very countenance. Still, despite his obvious despair, his hair is sideswept in the style Sherlock prefers, and he’s painfully irresistible.

Feeling detached, Sherlock accepts the tea with a faint nod before turning to round on his brother – who is suddenly, curiously absent.

“Where’s Mycroft?”

John draws back a bit to fix him with a baffled stare.

“He left. A while ago, had some ‘business of utmost importance’ or something.”

Stillness, then. The atmosphere descends and snakes between them with suffocating weight as Sherlock rises to his feet. His legs are unsteady, but there’s a glint from the corner of his eye, the unearthly blue haze radiating from the skull painting he’d hung on the wall so many years ago.

Sherlock staggers toward it, mesmerized by the unnatural glow. He raises a hand in intrigue-

“I’m sorry,” John starts, “I’m well and truly out of my depths here. I just wish you knew. I never told you. All this time, after everything, and I never told you.”

The detective snaps his hand to his side, the strange luminescence of his favorite painting forgotten, and spins around to face John head-on.

“Goodbye, Sherlock,” John rasps, and Sherlock is reaching out for him, but he’s gone, gone down a corridor that never existed in their flat before, gone out of his sight before he can even muster the energy to chase after him.

Sherlock droops with rejection, leaned against the peeling wallpaper, his limbs numb and sluggish. There are alarm bells from the streets below and some mundane Bond movie is exploding on the telly. Bereft and alone, he turns back to the painting, traces the brow ridges and each individual tooth with the pad of his index finger.

“This doesn’t feel real,” he speaks aloud. The flat darkens at his words; it’s no longer the sundew stretch of light, more a morbid shadow cast about the lonesome space.

The thought manifests in his gut as a horrible, writhing thing, black tendrils of icy panic threading up his spine.

“I see,” Sherlock parses aloud. “Occam’s Razor.”

0^0^0^0

All at once, the steady thrum of the helicopter blades, the too-white teeth-  
The tilted head screaming ‘LIAR,’ the plea for a miracle, the shroud of denial. A twisted staircase to nowhere, the descent into hell, and in the backdrop of the chaos, _Stayin’ Alive_ pulses through the torpid air. Sherlock’s bewildered mind trips over itself in an attempt to rationalize his surroundings, each footfall echoing against the dirty stairs, his palm rubbed raw from clutching the bannister as he flees the scene. Then there’s John, steadfast and loyal and furious, pinning him against the wall, punching his kidney, his ribs, screaming at him to _wake up_.  
  


0^0^0^0

Sherlock startles to consciousness in a sterile white room, and it feels like surfacing for air after nearly drowning. Every thought and action is delayed a few seconds. He wants to pull up a command prompt and ping reality, study the latency, pour over the lost packets. There’s a tube down his throat. Needles in his arm. Other tubes in other places.

_Oh God, what have I done?_

He’s hooked up to so many _machines_ , and there’s an irony there, a machine feeding off machines, a snake swallowing its own tail. The backdrop of steady beeping increases in tempo as he attempts to lift a hand, wishing to tear at the interminable needles and tubes invading his person, but his extremities are leaden. One of the machines chirps angrily, and within moments a nurse bursts in, gaping at his desperate eyes with poorly-banked awe. She speaks to him, murmuring generic comforts- “you’re all right dear, just a moment,” as she flits about like a hummingbird, turning dials and palming at him without the first consideration for his already limited comfort.

A bag of fluid is hung up and a new needle is pressed into his cephalic vein. The darkness reclaims him then, deep and dreamless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally broke into this fandom after a whole decade. Even though I'm late to the party, I hope I can do this justice.


	2. Who is the Blacksmith?

Routine. Wake up, clean up a bit, send out a few texts, then hail the nearest cab to Bart’s. It’s the new reality, the one where Sherlock is a sham and criminals dance around the London police uninhibited. John’s life is now measured by little markers of familiarity – the burnt, free hospital coffee, the weekly therapy sessions, the lonesome nights passed with multiple tumblers of Highland Black. Days blur together in this grey stretch of time. Sherlock is on life support.

So is John.

He stares at his reflection in the smudged-up bathroom mirror. His hair has grown out longer than he prefers, with little tufts curling down and over his ears. His jumper is unwashed, sporting a coffee stain at the hem. There’s a gaunt, haunted quality to his face, shadows lingering beneath his eyes and cheekbones – the physical manifestation of grief. John drops his gaze to where he clutches the sink with an iron grip, knuckles worn raw from repeated contact with a myriad of surfaces: the cupboard beside the fridge, the coffee table in the sitting room, the unyielding brick of the St. Bartholomew’s foyer.

Thoughts spiral in these in-between moments, and every time he hazards to blink, he sees Sherlock up on that rooftop, courting the edge. John remembers certain, irrelevant details with alarming clarity – how from even so far down he could glimpse the toes of Sherlock’s Oxfords peeking over the concrete perimeter. And then, the broken laugh of a broken man, upon John’s insistence that he _could_ be that clever. Only him. Only ever him.

He wonders what he could have said, convinced there exists a string of words that even his dull little mind could weave together that would have stopped Sherlock from plummeting to the ungiving sidewalk below. Half-formed confessions and praises blend, serving only to intensify the twisting guilt that perpetually claws at his ribcage. His therapist says it’s not his fault. Lestrade, Molly, the battery of acquaintances he sometimes elects to keep in touch with, they all say: _It’s not your fault._

He wants to believe them, but he can’t. He just can’t.

“ _Shit_ ,” he whispers. He grips the porcelain with such rage that his arms begin to tremble, half expects the sink to splinter beneath the weight of his regret.

It doesn’t. Of _course_ it doesn’t. If John could bend the laws of physics to the secretive whims of his heart, Sherlock would have never collided with that sidewalk in the first place.

With a slow exhale, he withdraws, shakes his head, tries to shake off the fresh wave of nausea. He leaves 221B without even bothering to grab his coat. It doesn’t seem to matter. The cold can have him, what little is left of him. He rides in a dingy cab to Bart’s, trudges through the main entrance, nods to the now-familiar receptionists. On autopilot, his legs dutifully carry him up to the ICU waiting room and further still, through the silver double-doors. The weight of his Sig Sauer is oppressive against his flank, whispering to him as he passes a barrage of nurses and weary-eyed doctors.

He’s almost to Sherlock’s room when he notices a distinctly posh voice rise above the usual clamor.

“It’s getting late, isn’t it, dear brother? The game is over. It’s time to come home.”

John draws back the privacy curtain with an aggressive yank and seethes at the back of the man before him. He’s looming over Sherlock’s prone form like a vulture, primly resting his weight on a curled bamboo umbrella handle. Mycroft doesn’t even have the decency to turn when he croons, “Hello, Dr. Watson.”

John’s blood sings with vengeance. He wants to tackle the man, to pummel his aquiline nose until it breaks. He wants to throttle his throat until that condescending voice is reduced to a hoarse whisper, wants to break every one of his ribs while muttering things like _“traitor”_ and _“how could you?”_

-But then Mycroft inclines his head, turning to glimpse John from the corner of his eye, and even over his sharp shoulder John can read the despair on that countenance. The elder Holmes’ visible eye has a glassy quality to it, his complexion pallid and corpse-like. Beneath the fine Vitale Barberis Canonico suit and expensive Italian loafers John glimpses a distinct shadow of fear. The fight leaves him, replaced with unmitigated exhaustion, and he merely offers a tight nod in lieu of a proper greeting before crossing the room and resuming his post in the single, shoddy chair.

Silence unspools between them. Sherlock’s heart monitor chirps out a steady rhythm, and John says nothing.

“I did not expect our plan to fail,” Mycroft quietly admits, after a time. He’s not looking at John, his gaze fixed instead on his brother’s unmoving brow.

John’s scotch-addled faculties are slow to parse out the words, hinging on one in particular: _plan_. He purses his lips. His left hand flexes and unflexes.

“I’m sorry, this was _planned_?” he growls.

There it is again. The rage. Eclipsing all else, John’s vision tunnels like a fish-eye lens, focusing on Mycroft with the intensity of a half-starved falcon. The bespoke-suited man doesn’t so much as flinch beneath the scrutiny.

“We calculated several outcomes; the fall was one of them. A disenfranchised local celebrity brought low by allegations of falsehood driven to suicide. This was no surprise.”

As Mycroft speaks, John’s knuckles go bone-white from violently clutching his armrests.

“However, there is a wide margin for error when attempting a stunt like this; that ‘margin for error’ chiefly being the involvement of others.”

John breathes hard through his nose as the truth descends upon him with all the subtlety of a concrete slab. He’s the fool _again_ , strung along like a helpless puppy following at the heels of men who are always three steps ahead, their mental acuity too sharp to bother with divulging their secrets to someone so ordinary and _dull_. His vision swims, limbs tense with a cocktail of adrenaline and unfiltered fury.

It’s too much. The great Sherlock Holmes lies comatose in a nondescript hospital bed and Mycroft, always the epitome of icy composure, is stripped bare, right down to his sorrowful bones. And it was all _planned_. There’s a shift in John, or maybe in the world as a whole.

“So that’s it, then?” he spits, rising from the chair so swiftly that it falls right over. “Had this all thought out?”

He marches forward with purpose, grips Mycroft’s lapels and knocks him _hard_ against the opposite wall.

“ _Two months_ ,” he rasps. Mycroft is lax in his hold and still won’t meet his gaze, his head downturned in an uncharacteristic show of submission. “I thought he’d given up. I thought that. And now you’re telling me this was all just part of your _plan_? Hm?”

John pulls forward then slams Mycroft back against the wall for emphasis, delighting in the muted crack of his skull against painted brick.

“One word, Mycroft. That’s all I would have needed. ‘But I wouldn’t understand,’ is that it? I’m too _stupid_ to be let in on your schemes!?”

An errant nurse ducks his head in at the commotion, absorbs the tableau of the two of them, and swiftly departs. John’s chest heaves with mishandled oxygen, whereas Mycroft remains pliant in his grasp. It’s infuriating; he wishes the man would fight, would give him a force to push back against, an outlet for his poorly-banked anger. Instead, the elder Holmes merely sighs and brushes John’s hands away with a dismissive gesture. To his own bewilderment, John allows it.

“You are mistaken,” Mycroft murmurs. “Your involvement would have meant certain death.”

John scoffs, letting out a mirthless little laugh that is completely void of joy.

“Yeah, alright, ‘certain death.’ He’s still right there, isn’t he?” John gestures to Sherlock in all his stillness.

“Not for him,” Mycroft counters, and some of the edge has returned to his tone, some of that perpetual exasperation bleeds through. It’s a testament to the insanity of his life that John finds the return to character oddly comforting.

“For you.”

It feels like being plunged in a winter lake. John’s descending past the ice-drunk minnows, his lungs heavy with water and moss.

“Me?” he breathes. “That doesn’t-“

“There were snipers trained on you, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson,” Mycroft interjects, gentling his voice. “With Moriarty dead, my brother felt he had no other choice.”

John stumbles back a few paces, hazards to turn to Sherlock. It’s an old proclivity, stamped on his psyche as deeply as instinct, looking to him for answers. For once, Sherlock has nothing to give. His body ( _transport_ , he would have corrected, were he lucid) lies bruised and broken, invaded by tubes and needles, and there is no indication whatsoever of that brilliant mind. Something gnarled and ugly twists in John’s gut. He upends the chair and collapses into it, pushing the heels of his hands into his brow.

There’s the click of heels, the drag of his umbrella, as Mycroft steps forward. John peers over his fingers to watch as the elder Holmes leans over Sherlock, dark eyes wide with irritation.

“What is it you always say?” he hisses. “ _’Only transport?_ ’ Well why don’t you prove it, hm?”

Desperation laces his words, and John has never, not once, witnessed Mycroft plead for anything. He doesn’t beg, doesn’t barter. He’s a puppet master, sneering down at his army of marionettes, delighting in how they all dance beneath his cunning, finely-manicured fingers. And yet here he stands, pleading in his own, aggressive way, for his brother to wake up.

Mycroft exhales, straightens, checks his phone.

“When you first came into our lives, I said that you could be the making of my brother or make him worse than ever.” He lifts his gaze then, pins John in place, and gone is the earlier submission. The atmosphere thickens, becomes heavy with the promise of danger. John is perceptive enough to pluck out the threat in those words. His brows draw together in question, but then Mycroft flashes a tight, insincere smile and turns to leave.

“Well, I have lingered for too long. I have some business of utmost importance to attend to. Take care, Dr. Watson.”

Mycroft draws back the curtain and is absorbed into the steady throng of medical staff.

“Christ,” John whispers.

He’s a doctor, he knows that each day of unconsciousness is a strike against the odds of recovery. Sherlock’s muscles are deteriorating from disuse, his lungs and heart growing weak from intubation. He’s seen this before, and people don’t come back from this. There will be conversations soon, softly spoken discussions formed around phrases like _“end of life”_ and _“what he would want.”_ Sherlock’s blood is mixed with rainwater in the gutters beneath West Smithfield and John’s future feels as unfathomable as it had after his return from Afghanistan, and there isn’t a damned thing he can do about any of it.

John closes his eyes, tries to school his own pulse to match that of the chirping heart monitor. The nurse from before sheepishly scurries in to change an IV drip, flitting about like a hummingbird, nervous and quick. John must look as closed off as he feels, because the boy says nothing as he works, and is quick to leave once his tasks are done. John marshals himself after a time, “Alright,” he says to no one, and draws to his feet, trying his best to ignore the returning twinge of pain in his left leg. Closing the distance between them, he stands at Sherlock’s bedside and clears his throat, still stricken with awkwardness at the situation, even after so many weeks.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out. “I’m well and truly out of my depths here. I just wish you knew. I never told you. All this time, after everything, and I never told you.”

John ducks his head, focusing on the cyan rivers that wind down Sherlock’s wrist beneath thin, vellum flesh. He takes that hand into his own on a whim. Sherlock’s fingers are cold and lax in his grasp, and so he squeezes them even tighter.

“You told me once that you weren’t a hero. Um, there were times I didn’t even think you were human, but let me tell you this-”

He pauses, lets his gaze drift upward, where the endotracheal tube disappears down Sherlock’s throat. Further up still, his cheekbones protrude like jutting shears of stone, sharp and unearthly. His eyes are still behind shut lids, his lank hair overgrown and greasy. John swallows hard and reaches from deep within to pull at one last spiderthread of courage.

“You were the best man. And the most human… human being that I’ve ever known and no one will ever convince me that you told a lie. I was so alone, and I owe you so much.”

All at once he can’t bear it, can’t stomach to look at a face that is no longer familiar, just an uncanny shade of the man who thrived not so long ago. John’s miserable gaze drops back to their hands, wondering at the fingertip callouses that still linger from countless hours spent pressed against metal violin strings.

“But please, there’s just one more thing, one more miracle, Sherlock, for me.”

He blinks and blinks, his throat closing-up with restrained emotion. He clutches that hand tighter, as though it were his only anchor to reality.

“Don’t. Be. Dead. Would you do that just for me? Just stop it. Stop this-“

John gestures uselessly with his free hand, at the bed, at the room, at Sherlock himself. Sherlock, of course, says nothing. The monitor beeps out its metronome of pilfered life, and John feels more alone than he ever has in the whole of his turbulent existence.

“I can’t,” he murmurs, then clears his throat again. He gently lowers Sherlock’s hand back to the mattress, careful not to jostle his IV, then gives a shaking nod.

“Goodbye, Sherlock.”  
  


0^0^0^0  
  


Much, much later, when John has managed to waive away Mrs. Hudson’s endless trays of tea and biscuits, when he’s already three glasses deep in scotch, his phone blares to life. He recognizes the number, and his chest seizes with panic, fingers shaking as he swipes to answer.

_“Is this John Watson?”_

“Yes.”

_“This is Dr. Taylor, I’ve been looking after Mr. Holmes.”_

John is already on his feet, clumsily trying to pull on his shoes with one hand.

“Oh God, what’s happened?”

_“He is waking up.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this is what I do. Show up months later with an update. I don't abandon my works, folks, I just take a dick-year to wrap them up. The following chapters should come more easily, but this one was tough to write. I hate hospitals and I hate setting up a narrative, I just want to skip to the fun parts. I have some crazy shit planned, so please stay tuned and thank you so much for reading!


	3. A Palm Closes Around Folded Leather

She says “you’re alright dear, just a moment,” as she flits about, pawing at his body like a mortician, as if she could rearrange him into something that might make sense to her falcon’s gaze. Synapses fire in Sherlock’s mind, muted observations picking up the smattering of short hairs on her scrubs and the deep-set crow’s feet about her eyes despite an otherwise youthful face. Identifiers like “cat lover” and “romantic” and “ _liar_ ” filter through his sluggish mind, and the nurse’s strained smile is the very last thing he sees before sinking back into the ink-black ichor of unconsciousness.

He reemerges in Magnussen’s office, stood in front of a 3-panel mirror, palms up defensively, as his sharp faculties stutter to a halt.

“Oh Sherlock, if you take one more step I swear I will kill you,” she murmurs, black leather curled around a crescent-moon trigger.

“No, Mrs. Watson,” Sherlock says, boldly stepping forward. “You won’t.”

Her index finger squeezes in defiance, and there’s a moment of confusion, a moment of falling, and then-

-A wedding. The obnoxious yellow walls close in around him as he lingers uncertainly in the aisle, staring at the cold expanse of John’s back. At his marrow-deep uncertainty, she merely smirks, leans in, and mutters, “Neither of us were his first.”

Time unspools, cases and blog posts, shouting matches and bloody noses and hidden caches of cocaine. She looms over his hospital bed, her lips grim and painted red, and whispers, “Go to hell, Sherlock.”

Floral notes of Clair De La Lune stick in his nostrils and the itchy IV needles stick in his forearm. He’s in a crowded restaurant and the paltry wings he strapped to his back are dripping wax as he spins forward, the brightness too much, too punishing, but he can’t help himself, he has to draw closer-

“I know what you are,” she says, from the television screen. Draped in black like a widow, her eyes sparkling cruelly. “I know what you could become.”  
  


0^0^0^0  
  


London smears by in a blur of red and white and yellow as the cab ambles on at a seemingly geological pace. John’s right hand clenches reflexively, his blood surging with the torturous light of hope. When the pillar of St. Bart’s finally crests the moondark horizon, he throws a tenner at the cabbie, bursts from the door, and marches into the hospital with the same ramrod straight posture of a soldier plunging into battle. When John finally reaches the ICU, his chin is lifted defiantly, his shoulders squared out of instinct, issuing a silent challenge to the fellow doctors and nurses, the battery of medical staff, daring any of them to try and stop him.

Just as John reaches Sherlock’s room, a somewhat-familiar nurse pulls back the curtain and slips out before he can draw inside. She’s a petite thing, with cropped blonde hair and a glimmer of mirth in her tired eyes.

“How is he?” John asks.

“Doing better,” she chirps, and her enthusiasm is contagious. “ _Much_ better, actually. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

John peers over her shoulder at the curtain separating him from Sherlock, his mouth agape in wonder.

“He’s a fighter, isn’t he?” the nurse goes on.

John huffs out something in the affirmative, his anxiety finally breaking, leaving him shaken and a little breathless.

“Can I see him?” he manages, more as a courtesy than anything else.

“I don’t think Dr. Taylor would be too pleased,” she answers. “But there’s not much I can do if you were to, say, slip by without my noticing.”

The nurse’s lips quirk in a conspiratorial grin, and John is stricken with the combined weight of relief and gratitude.

“That’s nice of you,” he murmurs, then offers a hand. “I’m John.”

“I know who you are,” she replies as she fits her smaller hand in his. Her tone is light, melodic, as if they were both in on the same joke. “I’m Mary.”

“Mary,” John parrots. “A pleasure.”

She tilts her head, a gesture that strikes John as a little odd, and says, “See you soon,” before blending away into the unerring stream of blue scrubs. John rolls his shoulders, sets his chin, and breaches the curtain.

He’s not as observant as the Holmes brothers, but John’s line of work has at least sharpened his eye for matters of health. To a layman, Sherlock must look the same as before – laid still and quiet on the hospital bed. John sees the shift, though, the minute tics of his elegant fingers, the way his eyes roll back and forth behind shut lids. The grey pallor of his skin has lifted somewhat, and his lips are twitching intermittently.

John cautiously approaches the bedside, and the darker part of him, the part that has seen children fade away while disease ravages their small frames, the part that has administered unprecedented dosages of morphine to elderly patients while their family lingers in a semi-circle awaiting the inevitable – _that_ part whispers: “ _even if he is, still,_ technically _alive, will he be the same?”_

It would be worse than death, John thinks, for the husk of Sherlock’s transport to slowly heal while the shadow of his once-brilliant mind fades away, leaving nothing but base animal instinct – a starved brainstem concerned chiefly with _eat, sleep, breathe_.

He’s startled from his morbid reverie when Dr. Taylor steps inside and freezes, his wrinkled brow creasing further with obvious frustration.

“Mr. Watson-“

“ _Doctor_ Watson,” John corrects, his protective core flaring to life. The other man sags with an exasperated groan.

“ _Dr._ Watson, I understand this is difficult, but I need to tend my patient in peace.”

John takes a half-step backward and gestures loosely to Sherlock’s prone form as if to say _“by all means, go right ahead.”_

“If you would kindly step outside-“

“I really can’t,” John interjects. Dr. Taylor’s lips flatten into a thin line, no doubt considering whether to call for security, but something in John’s immovable stature must sway him in the end.

“You should understand better than anyone,” he eventually murmurs, “the level of focus needed to treat a patient in this condition. Stay out of my way.”

Venom drips from each consonant as he punctuates the last sentence, and John eventually nods his acquiescence with an air of grudging respect.

Dr. Taylor works with gentle, assured motions, reducing the propofol drip, checking oxygen levels, reviewing each machine’s history. John’s gaze on him is sharp and unrelenting, and a lesser man would have flinched away under the heavy scrutiny, but the doctor seems wholly unbothered, his focus set entirely on Sherlock.

He produces a small torch from his pocket and gently lifts one of Sherlock’s lids, testing his pupil’s reaction to the abrasive light. John quashes the urge to rush forward and witness the proceedings for himself.

With a contented huff, Dr. Tayler pockets the torch, straightens his labcoat, and finally turns to address John directly.

“With any luck, he’ll be lucid within a few hours.” His demeanor softens somewhat then, before adding, “We just have to be patient.”

Though, admittedly, patience has never been one of John’s strengths, he offers another tight nod.

“Right. Thank you.”  
  


0^0^0^0  
  


Sherlock reemerges in the lower depths, his extremities tingling uncomfortably, as though he’s been on an excursion on some remote mountain peak. Conversely, he finds himself at the bottom of the spiral stairwell, filthy tiles glinting under a flickering florescent light. There’s a figure huddled a few paces away, his shoulders drawn tight in on himself, restrained by a straitjacket and the thick chain affixed about his neck.

 _“You,”_ Sherlock breathes, accusatory. “You never felt pain, did you?”

He’s heaving, mishandling the stagnant air, fingers trembling at his sides.

“Why did you never feel pain?”

“You always feel pain, Sherlock,” the other man murmurs. His neck cranes to the side with a sickening _crrrick_ , before he lurches forward, catching at the end of his metallic tether. “But you Don’t. Have. To. _Fear_ it.”

Sherlock stumbles back, and the concrete bricks give way. It’s as easy as breaching the surface of a placid summer pond. He falls without anything of substance to break his weight, falls right back into 221B, and stumbles forward to collapse into the dining area chair. There’s an undrunk cup of tea waiting for him, and the skull painting leers ominously from his peripheral vision.

“John?” he hazards. A distinctive _clink_ chimes from the kitchenette, another tea cup set abruptly upon the counter without comment.

“For God’s sake,” Sherlock grumbles. “We have work to do. Stop mulling around in the kitchen.”

John sighs with his whole body, as if the air were being squeezed out of him. He turns to Sherlock, and there’s a deep wisdom in his eyes, a knowing, some piece of information that Sherlock isn’t privy to. It’s a bit humbling, this role-reversal, to be the one who’s unsure, the one lacking all the data.

 _“What?”_ Sherlock snaps.

“You know, I haven’t slept properly in months,” John says, by way of explanation. “Pretty sure this whole ordeal has shaved a few years off my life.” He pauses to square his shoulders, a subconscious tick, an old proclivity he falls back on before plunging into battle. “Listen, Sherlock, you _have_ to wake up.”

The stillness that follows is unnerving. Just seconds before, Sherlock could hear the clamor from the street below, the errant pigeon calls, the guttural rumbling of the furnace. Following John’s plea, the whole world seems to stop; even the dust motes floating through the humid air freeze in place. It’s only him, and John, the latter of whom is staring at him with raised brows, as if to say, _“Well?”_

Pieces slot into place, slowly. They’re not quite memories, but they’re suggestions of memories. The sketch of a scene, the shape of hushed words. Sherlock inhales sharply, then turns to the macabre painting on the wall. It shimmers like pavement on a hot summer day, glistening unnaturally. The sight is deeply unsettling, but Sherlock feels drawn to it, in spite of his better sense.

“You asked for one more miracle,” he breathes. John’s mouth quirks in a half-grin.

Sherlock gestures to the painting. The dark orbital sockets flicker and move like motes of black flame.

“Is that it? The way out?”

John shrugs, but steps forward to lean against the molding, crossing his arms in expectation.

The painting seems to grow in size at Sherlock’s cautious approach, and by the time he reaches it, it’s nearly taking up the entire wall. He clamors up on the couch and can feel something emanating off the stretched canvas; it feels like little gusts of cold wind, like there’s a different world just on the other side. Hesitating a moment, he turns back to glimpse John one last time, and the man is finally smiling properly, laugh-lines crinkling about his eyes. He gives a tight nod – a silent affirmation that Sherlock nonetheless understands: _Go on, then._

“See you on the other side,” he says, his blood singing with the thrill of the unknown, as he steps through the painting as if it were an open doorway.  
  


0^0^0^0  
  


Enough time has passed that the sky begins to lighten; it isn’t yet sunrise, but just before. John is more exhausted than he’s ever been, but the stiff hospital chair gives no quarter, and while he catches his leaden eyelids drooping and his chin nodding, sleep manages to evade him.

There’s an ancient telly perched precariously on a worn oak shelf bolted to the wall. The CRT screen flickers as the weatherman drones:

_“…unprecedented gusts of wind, coming from the east…”_

The minutes drag on and, to a sleep-deprived brain, the world stops making sense; light twists and shifts in odd ways, leaving lurid trails that only fade after a few seconds. It becomes harder to parse words, and easier to miss things that might have seemed obvious, otherwise. The whiplash of skeletal branches outside the only window might have concerned him, were he more lucid. Defeat settles his frame like a careworn blanket; he thinks the whole cursed building could blow over in a tornado of bricks and it would all be the same to him. It is a testament to John’s connection with Sherlock, that even on the precipice of slumber, he notices a hitch of breath, then a stuttered exhale that might have been a groan.

John sits up immediately, a sudden rush of adrenaline flooding his veins, rendering him impossibly alert. Sherlock winces, turns his head to one side, and John is beside him in an instant. _Please_ , he prays to nothing and to everything, to any theoretical entity who might listen, _Please._

Sherlock opens his eyes, searches John’s face, and the light of recognition squeezes complicated fingers around John’s throat. He tries to speak, mouths John’s name, but only manages a pitiful, gravelly sound. The intent is unmistakable though; he remembers. John’s eyes grow misty at the revelation, his chest expanding from sheer, unmitigated relief.

“Yeah,” he chokes. “I’m here. Welcome back.”

Sherlock brings a clumsy, leaden hand up to trace his Adam’s apple, and John realizes his throat must be raw from where the endotracheal tube was removed only hours before. Carefully, as though the man were made of porcelain, John takes his hand and returns it to his side.

“You were intubated,” he offers in way of explanation.

Sherlock’s eyes roll back in a weak show of annoyance and he says something, or tries to say something, that sounds suspiciously like, “Tedious.” It brings a smile to John’s lips, how he can maintain his wry humor even in such a state.

“I’ll go and fetch the doctor,” John says, all in a rush. “Be right back.”

A stab of guilt slices through him at Sherlock’s pinched expression. He can read the lines of that face. They say, _“You_ are _my doctor.”_

When John yanks back the privacy curtain, he’s startled by Mary, who was evidently about to do the same.

“How is he?” she chirps.

“He’s awake,” John replies, bringing his hands up in emphasis. “He remembers me. I can’t really believe it. It’s-“

“-a miracle!” Mary finishes his sentence, smiling broadly and clasping her hands together. “Oh, how wonderful! I’ll go get Dr. Taylor, you keep him occupied in the meantime.”

John nods, brightened by her infectious cheerfulness, and turns back to Sherlock. He notices the shift, how the man’s face has blanched, his features drawn tight. It’s the same expression he wore at the pool during his first encounter with Moriarty, the cold mask of one on the precipice of committing homicide.

“Hey, it’s alright,” John soothes. “He’ll be here any second.”

“Mary,” Sherlock manages, voice splintering with the effort.

It shouldn’t surprise John after all this time that the most observant man in the world would have internalized this information, even in the depths of a coma, but John is floored all the same.

“Brilliant,” he whispers. “Yes, she’s your nurse.”

Sherlock shakes his head, tries to move as if to sit up, but his muscles are weak and uncooperative. He hisses through his teeth, clearly frustrated.

“Just hold on,” John says, the first threads of alarm snaking up his spine. His hands hover uncertainly over Sherlock’s prone form, conflicted from wanting to hold him in place without causing further damage. “You’ll tear out the IV-“

“Liar,” Sherlock murmurs.

John’s brows knit together in confusion. He’s about to ask for clarification when Dr. Taylor sweeps in, wearing a toothy grin. The grin only widens when Sherlock’s pupils dart to meet his own.

“Hello there, Mr. Holmes,” Taylor says brightly. Sherlock shuts his eyes and presses his head further into the pillow, as if it might swallow him up. “No, no, stay with me. I just need to go over a few things.”

He performs a series of tests, asks simple “yes or no” questions that Sherlock can respond to with small hand gestures in lieu of speech. He then turns to John directly to outline his plan for the coming months, how he wants to get Sherlock moving as soon as possible, which John agrees with.

“We’ll let him rest this first day,” Dr. Taylor says. “Then, if he continues to show improvement, we’ll see about sitting him up. Baby steps.”

John nods attentively. He can’t remember ever being so ecstatic. The recovery process will be long and turbulent and exhausting, and he’s looking forward to every minute of it, to every grumbled word of dissent, to every pitfall and every victory. _It will be a privilege_ , he thinks, half-delirious. _An utter privilege._

He’s so caught up in discussion with Dr. Taylor, and so raw from sleep deprivation bisected with sheer joy, that he fails to notice Mary hovering in the doorway, staring at Sherlock with an impish smile, and Sherlock glaring defiantly back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope I'm not too far up my own ass with this plotline. It'll all come together in the end (probably). I'm trying to use a lot of symbolism here; if anything is mentioned, it's probably a smoking gun. Let me know if anything sticks out to you, I'd love the feedback. Thanks all!


End file.
